“The Bible is no longer read as a text for living prayerfully and obediently-the full spectrum of the human condition and the staggering wonders of the revelation of God-but is advertised as the world’s bestseller collection of bumper-sticker slogans, happy-face promises, and seven-step moralisms that can give you everything worth knowing in the Bible without having to bother reading it.” – Eugene Peterson.

My thoughts:

We, as pastors, preach the Bible every week. But, how we preach, read, dissect, and wrestle with it will teach our church community how they would read and meditate on Scripture.

We have to go beyond pieces of advice, slogans, and cute illustrations. We need the Word of God to penetrate the hearts and souls of the hearers. Our job as preachers and pastors is to speak solely to our congregation- not thinking if this preaching, once uploaded on the internet, would go viral. We need Scripture to speak to us first and do its cleansing work in us as preachers. That’s when the preaching of the Word becomes effective long term.

This book by Eugene Peterson and his son has been disturbing me for a long time. What a great book to challenge how we see our vocation as pastors and how we shepherd our church. I need to check on this more.

Get this book on Kindle: https://amzn.to/3Gr0JFE